Pages

About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Monday, July 31, 2017

The August issue of the United States Naval Institute Proceedings has an article of mine, "Bring Back the Dragon Swarms," in the August issue (membership required), which advocates breaking down the MEU into company teams moved by vessels designed to carry a single company-sized element.

The model is the APD of World War II.

I'm pleased to finally make it in to Proceedings. They bought a couple of my articles about twenty years ago but they never made it to print.

"The actions of our sailors will be monitored by our numerous neighbors in the region," Russian Vice Admiral Alexander Fedotenkov was quoted as saying in a statement released by the Russian Defence Ministry.

"Holding such an exercise is in no way a threat to other nations," he said.

He has a point. I'm not worried that China's ships pose a threat or that training with the Russians will hone the Russian edge to be more of a threat. But Russia should be worried. The threat is to Russia.

Exercising in the Baltic where the Russians have to protect St. Petersburg is useful for China to do.

I think China has an interest in seeing how the Russians operate in a closed sea in defense of a major port city. Like Vladivostok, to pick a city at random.

Of course, watching the Russians in the Baltic Sea is no substitute for exercises near Russian Pacific ports. For that you'd have to exercise in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.

Wait. What?

The exercise, called "Sea Cooperation-2017," follows similar ones held last year. More exercises of the same kind will be held in mid-September in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk, China's state news agency Xinhua reported last month.

Oh. Well as Fedotenkov might say, those drills will in no way be a threat to others.

The European Union entangles their subject states in a web of regulations that will create an ever closer union until the EU is an imperial state.

The EU dismissed the British Brexit team as amateurs, basically. Which is odd:

The British team consists of well-educated and experienced civil servants. In claiming that this team is not up to the task of understanding the complexities of EU processes and regulations, the EU has made the strongest case possible against itself. If these people can’t readily grasp the principles binding Britain to the EU, then how can mere citizens understand them? And if the principles are beyond the grasp of the public, how can the public trust the institutions?

The public can' trust the institution:

The EU has become an authoritarian regime insisting that it is the defender of liberal democracy. There are many ways to strip people and governments of their self-determination. The way the EU has chosen is to create institutions whose mode of operation is opaque and whose authority cannot be easily understood. Under those circumstances, the claim to undefined authority exercised in an opaque manner becomes de facto authoritarianism – an authoritarianism built on complexity. It is a complexity so powerful that the British negotiating team is deemed to be unable to grasp the rules.

They are singing to the choir on the authoritarian nature of the European Union. I have long been opposed to this proto-imperial order as heading toward an anti-American empire that crushes liberty.

America must oppose the EU as a political entity for our national interests. Europeans should oppose the EU for their freedom and liberty.

Britain, as the author notes, shouldn't fear European threats to trade with Britain.

Europe caves in to Iran to get trade with that small but evil state. Will Europe really stiff-arm advanced Britain with 6-1/2 times the GDP and which also provides a good chunk of European military power?

Sunday, July 30, 2017

In 1991, when I retired from active duty, only 50 percent of our nation’s young people—ages 17 to 24—were considered eligible for military service as officers or enlisted.

This was based on enlistment standards set by the military to ensure recruits would be competent to serve in our increasingly sophisticated military environment. Reasons for this lack of eligibility ranged from academic achievement to physical ability, to medical problems, drug use, and criminal records.

Today, eligibility to enlist has dropped to 25 percent, mostly because of an emergent condition among young people called obesity!

While a national effort to encourage better lifestyles would be good, even if it works it will be a long time to get results. You don't turn that ship on a dime.

And honestly I have my doubts that such a broad societal effort will have much of an effect. It's not like the government doesn't encourage better eating and more exercise.

I think a better approach would be to establish pre-basic training lifestyle camps for new recruits designed to get recruits otherwise qualified into shape with lower weight, more strength, and better eating habits.

When I was in basic training (in 1988) I know the Army had pre-basic strengthening camps that lasted 3 (if memory serves me) weeks.

Like the Army was able to do with lower standards at the height of the Iraq War, perhaps the Army (and the rest of the military) should study different types and scales of obesity and figure out which potential recruits in those categories could benefit from such pre-basic camps. I don't know how long they should last, but I assume months rather than weeks.

This could be contracted out to civilian companies with Army Reserve drill sergeants rotated in for oversight to remind the new recruits they are in the Army.

Of course, if only 25% of X number of potential recruits are eligible, increasing the eligibility rate is only part of the equation. Increasing X also increases the number of recruits.

Another problem is that the military doesn't recruit well in all parts of the country. If 75% of potential recruits aren't eligible, the military can't afford to fail in effectively recruiting in large parts of the country where a lot of the 25% eligible live.

I had a suggestion on that front, recently, with "Course Could Be a Lifesaver for Recruiting." (And just discovered it is online. See pages 14-15.)

One of the United States' most senior Navy commanders has acknowledged that accepting North Korea as a fully fledged nuclear power is "part of the dialogue" about how to deal with the rogue state.

I've long felt that in a bilateral framework, we could deter North Korea's nuclear weapons.

I really don't think North Korea is irrational. They have long had the ability to attack South Korea with some chance of success, but did not. In the post-Cold War era North Korea has lost both their Soviet backer and the ability to launch a conventional invasion, but the ability to hammer Seoul with high explosives and chemical weapons has remained. Yet North Korea has not attacked.

Maintaining their power is the ultimate goal of North Korea's ruling class. So a nuclear armed North Korea is admittedly far more dangerous on a wider front (including America eventually), but can be deterred.

And even if Iran can be deterred from using nukes (I think there is enough doubt about that to make the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran unacceptable), Iran will use nukes as a shield to be even more aggressive below the nuclear level. Is that something we want to encourage?

And you can't rule out that even if Iran's rulers won't use nukes that somebody in Iran who would love to use nukes could get access to one of them to do something horrific for the glory of Islam that the corrupt Iranian rulers are unwilling to do--most likely because they are a tool of the Great Satan or the Zionist Entity. (As they may tell themselves to justify mass murder.)

Have a super sparkly day.

UPDATE: This article is certainly reasonable in its discussion of coping with North Korea as a nuclear power rather than risking the uncertainties of war.

And if this was a problem restricted to North Korean nukes, I'd say the author has a strong argument. But the issue of broke North Korea selling nukes to a state like Iran is not raised.

I'm far more worried about North Korea selling nukes than I am of North Korea firing nukes at an American city.

Afghanistan needs effective air power. Our premature withdrawal of that capability before Afghanistan could even begin to replace Western air power is one reason the Taliban have made gains the last several years.

As the U.S. administration prepares its new strategy for Afghanistan, the Kabul government and its Western allies are working hard to develop an air force that gives government forces the advantage in their war against Taliban militants.

Effective air power to provide recon and surveillance, logistics, transport, medical, strike, and close air support is needed to defeat the Taliban.

One of the effects of effective air power is that it limits the ability of the Taliban to mass troops against small outposts and limits the time Taliban can afford to attack a target before they have to retreat and scatter to avoid air power intervening decisively in the battle.

The Taliban attacked the base overnight and killed 26 Afghan soldiers and wounded 13 more, the Ministry of Defense confirmed, according to TOLONews. Additionally, eight more soldiers are reported as missing and presumably captured by the Taliban. Fifty-seven of the 82 soldiers stationed at the base were killed, wounded or captured during the fighting.

The Afghans have to spread out to control and protect territory and the people to deny their use to the Taliban.

But the Afghan security forces can hardly afford to put a full battalion into every outpost needed for this mission.

Effective air power is an important tool to allow company-sized elements to hold off attacks until reinforcements arrive; and ultimately to make it more difficult for the Taliban to mass enough forces to overrun company outposts; and beyond that to allow Afghan forces to seize the initiative and go after the enemy to further atomize them.

We were winning the war and had the enemy on their heels. We needed to help Afghans keep the pressure on without American combat brigades in the lead.

No longer pinned down by U.S. air cover, Taliban fighters are attacking Afghan military posts in larger numbers with the aim of taking and holding ground, a shift from the hit-and-run strikes with posses of gunmen, explosives and suicide bombers.

According to Gen. Andrew Croft, the highest ranking U.S. Air Force officer in Iraq, the jihadists are struggling to regroup with their fragmented forces, due to coalition air power restricting one of their past battlefield strengths, the ability to move rapidly and amass fighters.

Yes. That's a nice thing to inflict on an enemy. It would be nice to do that in Afghanistan.

The State Department will block Americans from going to North Korea. I'm shocked (and disgusted that people would pay money to that horrible gulag with a UN seat) that this is necessary. But it won't work, as many Americans who traveled to Cuba from Canada for decades can attest. We should have any American planning to go to North Korea sign a document acknowledging that America will risk no members of the military trying to rescue them for being stupid.

Background on our "problem child" kind-of-ally Pakistan. We put up with Pakistan. But we also have little reason to seriously back Pakistan if things get really bad for them. The generals there may think nukes solve all their problems, but they don't. Nukes only prevent India from invading and occupying Pakistan--as if India wants to do that, of course. Rule of law would benefit Pakistan much more.

Sure, one problem Ukraine had in resisting Russia's near-bloodless conquest of Crimea was that there were leaders in Ukraine's military in Crimea who were pro-Russian. But that wasn't the key. So the fact that Russia recruits ethnic Russians in other former regions of the USSR doesn't mean Russia can repeat the Crimea conquest. Two additional factors were important in the Crimea outcome. One, the only combat unit was a marine battalion. The rest were rear echelon troops who at best could defend their own positions if attacked. Second, Ukrainians had just overthrown the pro-Russian government and the new government had not yet established authority to order troops ill-prepared to fight (which is how the former pro-Russian government wanted the military) into action to resist the Russians. It is also true that more people in Crimea were pro-Russian than in the rest of Ukraine, but I don't think that was really a factor in the short run. The article does mention these other factors, but doesn't flesh them out like it does the leadership issue (which is fine, this is a newspaper article on that aspect and not an intelligence evaluation). Russia's special forces did a good job in Crimea. But don't overstate what they achieved in unique circumstances as if the Russian special forces can repeat the achievement anywhere in the ex-Soviet sphere.

The Supreme Court infamously ruled the Obamacare penalty is a tax and not the government compelling a person to buy a product (insurance), thus upholding the core of the law. Could there be a lawsuit against the federal government demanding that fines and court fees for parking and vehicle moving violations be deductible on federal taxes because they are a (local) tax, too, and not a penalty? Just a thought. I'm not an attorney, of course.

The Russians are building up troops on the border with Ukraine. The location is not specified. As Syria settles down a bit, Russia could be getting ready to reignite the simmering war in the Donbas. If timed with a larger-than-advertised Zapad 2017 military exercise, the Russians could both threaten the northern border of Ukraine to tie down Ukrainian troops and serve as a shield or sword against NATO in the Baltic region. Which argues for keeping the pressure on Assad so financially shaky Russia has to choose which adventure to finance.

In a sane political world, I would heartily agree that injecting politics into a speech before the Boy Scouts was a breach of presidential protocol and an offense again politicizing every damn aspect of our lives. But no, the left has to turn the "Resistance" dial to 11 and compare the president's speech to Hitler speaking to the Hitler Youth, inflicting collateral damage on a valuable boys' organization in their eagerness to portray Trump as a national socialist dictator. So again, I back away from both the left and the president on this issue. Reducing my television news consumption has been a blessing. And I never have visited the most hyperbolic sources on the Internet. Serenity now.

I'm not sure how you fix this to balance civil liberties and appropriate intelligence gathering, but I do know that liberals would be up in arms if these violations of civil liberties had been taken by Trump rather than Obama.

I was just recalling that both my children, when they were little, liked me to sleep on the floor next to their beds while they fell asleep at night. I'd have to think fast for why I wasn't really trying to leave if one of them hadn't fallen asleep when I started to crawl out of the room!

It is disappointing that Congress has not repealed and replaced Obamacare. But the complaint that Republicans didn't craft a replacement while President Obama was in office is ridiculous. Why on Earth would Republicans draft a detailed plan that had no chance of passing but which would open up Republicans to nonstop Democratic-Media Complex savage attacks for "killing" Group X? And are you seriously claiming that this bill should have been written during the campaign? Who expected Trump to win? It only made sense to actually write a bill in January 2017 with the new Congress in office. Mind you, I'd like the Republicans to have a sense of urgency. But repeal soon with an effective date at the end of 2018 so there is a deadline and window to replace would be better, I think.

This is why I've long said it is a fool's game to try to control the ever-expanding federal government. Far better to shrink the power and scope of the federal government's reach. Of course, you have to control the federal government to do that ... If Republicans won't act when voters give them the chance to roll back the leviathan, their voters won't bother to vote. I know there is still time to pass something, but with Senator McCain voting that way (to make sure he isn't the target for a Democrat with better aim?), it will be difficult.

One of my frustrations with the American left has been their new inability to distinguish between illegal immigration and legal immigration set at levels that allow immigrants to integrate (and yes, assimilate, as generations of immigrants have done) into America. As a nation of ideas and not of blood and soil, anyone can be an American by adopting our ideas. If we can dramatically reduce illegal immigration by controlling our borders and fixing the visa system that counts on "visitors" voluntarily leaving when it is time, I would have no problem with legalizing rather than deporting illegals who have jobs and no crimes other than crossing the border on their record. But reversing the order is just a recipe for more illegal immigration.

I saw Dunkirk. It may be heresy to say that I think it was adequate. As a movie of various soda straw views of the epic evacuation, it was excellent. But you never really had the flow of the evacuation based on constant sinking of ships that gave the impression that the evacuation was failing miserably. Only a single line by a British officer near the end of the movie, saying that Churchill got over 300,000 troops away from the perimeter, finally tells you that the evacuation worked. Up until then you'd think from the movie that every soldier was being bombed and/or drowned. I enjoyed the movie. But was it history?

The biggest problem with self-driving cars is people. Tip to Instapundit. And they mostly talk about uncertainty and exploiting the cars in ways that inconvenience others. But don't under-estimate the ability of people to screw with the robots. I guarantee that it will be a sport for children and child-like adults to toss empty boxes in front of self-driving cars (or fly drones in front of, if you prefer) to watch them screech to a halt or carry out evasive maneuvers. Bank on that.

This article notes that China would face a nationalist backlash if it backs down in the Doka La Pass stand-off, especially since Xi could use a victory before a fall Communist Party conference. As I noted, China has experienced a number of losses in foreign policy and another one with India could be problematic for Xi.

Will attempting to isolate the aggressive Iran that is setting fires all around the Middle East and which never even admitted it had a nuclear program isolate America in the "international community" instead of isolating Iran? If, as the author of this article argues, canceling the Iran "deal" on top of backing out of the pointless Paris climate deal and abandoning the Pacific trade deal that wouldn't have been passed even if Hillary Clinton had won the election will isolate America, the "international community" is a sad joke and should take a long walk on a short pier. The weight of the "international community" is stopping Iran. It won't be much of a speed bump for America.

The Imran AwanDemocratic IT issue is starting to look, to me, like possible collusion with potential Pakistani intelligence leaks that could have flowed to jihadis and the Chinese (and maybe to the Russians if the Chinese wanted to share that bonanza with their little sidekick). And obstruction of justice, of course. We even have more cases of smashed hard drives (what is it with Democrats, they seem to seriously hate these cans hard drives). I've noted this odd issue before, puzzled that it was not getting more attention. The best case is that this is just ordinary Democratic corruption and sloppiness. The worst case is why I don't trust most Democrats on national security issues.

This isn't just about the state preying on people for revenue in a legal shakedown. It's also a case of unequal treatment under the law for those with the money to pay for the better treatment. Tip, again, to Instapundit.We think there are still 4,000 fighters and 3,000 paid supporters in ISIL's Iraq branch. One, that's not as high of a tooth-to-tail ratio that I'd think a terror group--even one with a proto-state--would have at this point. ISIL might want to hand out some guns to those ISIL desk jockeys. Two, that's a lot fewer than the 25,000 full-time insurgents we fought during the Iraq War counter-insurgency. This is not an insurmountable problem given the anger most Iraqis who live under ISIL rule have for the thugs. And three, some are still massed trying to hold territory. That opportunity to kill terrorists on a wholesale scale should be seized before they scatter and go underground which will lead to a slower-paced killing campaign against them.

Let me say that I am really happy with my massive reduction in watching TV news that is dominated by lefties turning the dial to 11 to attack Trump for every piddly thing; and fanboys (and girls) of Trump defending whatever he does. I can't help that TV encourages this kind of discourse. I can control whether I consume that product. I choose not to. It's liberating, really.

President Trump's reported suspension of a covert CIA program to fund, arm, and train Syrian rebels is seen as signaling the end of US efforts to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the battlefield.

Perhaps it is what we are seeing.

But I don't think we can trust an Assad we've done a small harm to if he survives this multi-war--and that's if Iran, who we can't trust, isn't effectively in control of Syria now.

Is Ukraine dying from a thousand cuts in a struggle that cannot regain the Donbas let alone Crimea? Does this mean Ukraine must negotiate to surrender their eastern territory to de facto Russian control and concede Russia's formal annexation of Crimea?

Although the Ukrainian army is far stronger than in 2014, in the past the Kremlin has repeatedly shown itself willing to pour in Russian special forces and regular troops whenever the battlefield situation has tilted against the rebels. Since Ukraine cannot defeat Russia and Russia has no intention of occupying Ukraine the only way to break the political stalemate and incessant skirmishing on the ground is through a new round of political negotiations.

"Negotiations" that start with Russia unwilling to leave Ukraine are only meant to ratify Russia's conquest.

I personally think Ukraine needs to make Russia die from a thousand cuts. Ukraine's efforts need to focus on killing Russian soldiers in the Donbas until Russia tires of the bleeding ulcer and withdraws from the Donbas unwilling to suffer ongoing losses to keep that scrap of territory.

Irregulars need to infiltrate Russian-dominated territory and plant mines around Russian units. Long-range artillery needs to target Russian positions with fire or scatterable mines. Intelligence people need to get locals to kill Russians.

As long as pro-Russian Ukrainians are dying to hold this gain for Russia, Russia will play the game all day long.

Start killing Russians and the question of staying is put back in play. Without the Russians to prop them up, the Donbas AstroTurf rebels won't be able to hold the ground.

Ukraine needs to do more than fight Russians. Reducing corruption and increasing rule of law in Ukraine will create more prosperity and freedom that will strengthen Ukraine's ability to fight and appeal to poverty-stricken Russian-occupied Donbas residents who only have the alternative of joining dictatorial and economically weak Russia.

And unless Russia leaves Donbas because they are chased out, the Russians will keep clawing for more territory the way they do at Georgia's expense since 2008.

Until Russia is strong enough to take even more in larger chunks, of course.

Crimea is a tougher problem. But ultimately, after Donbas is regained, long-range missiles to bombard Sevastopol base complex and mining Crimean waters could be a threat that gets Russia to negotiate for a return to the status quo ante on the peninsula.

And I'll repeat that I think in the interim Ukraine should sue Russia for rent for Crimea. The monthly bill for holding the entire region has to be pretty high considering the facilities and natural resources.

The German government says Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine have agreed on a number of "immediate measures" to push forward with a peace deal brokered in 2015 to end the bloody fighting in eastern Ukraine.

If Russia stopped waging war on Ukraine, the fighting would dwindle to nothing. The idea that Russia is trying to end the fighting is ludicrous and I don't know why anybody goes along with this pretend position.

Friday, July 28, 2017

Most allocated American military power is focused in the Horn of Africa and along the Mediterranean coast, leaving large portions of Africa with little real attention:

Although the U.S. wants to protect itself and its European allies from terror attacks from Africa, the problem is that the United States has “real, but limited, interests in a lot of places around the world, and especially in a lot of parts of sub-Saharan Africa,” Biddle told The Cipher Brief.

While the United States does not want African countries to become terrorist safe havens, “it’s not a big enough interest that we’re willing to send 100,000 troops to any of these countries to stabilize their real estate,” Biddle said, which is why the Administration is using more special operators who can both aid operations and train and advise African militaries.

Since America can hardly afford to send that many troops to a region way down the priority list, it would be good to prevent the disorder in the first place and bolster local capacity to intervene if such disorder breaks out.

Of course, reducing corruption and bolstering rule of law in African countries would raise capacity to resist disorder and roll it back if it breaks out more effectively than special forces. But that is a task beyond the skill set of our special forces troops.

Increasing the ability of the military to operate in the south without a footprint ashore would be helpful.

Russian aggression is to blame for violence in eastern Ukraine, where people are dying in what should be seen as a "hot war" rather than a "frozen conflict", the U.S. special envoy to the Ukraine peace talks said on a visit to Ukraine on Sunday.

Arguing that America spends as much as the next X countries below us and therefore spends enough to defend our country is a simplistic measure that ignores our geographic constraints and alliance responsibilities as well as little things like using firepower to reduce our casualties and precision to reduce civilian casualties. All these things cost money. And how much can we even trust the figures our foes publish?

The mummified remains of a baby and an adult have been discovered in a medieval necropolis in remote Siberia. The adult was covered in copper from head to toe, while small fragments of copper boiler were placed on the baby.

Archaeologists have yet to find out what exactly these funerary rituals meant. It is also unclear what mysterious ancient civilisation these two individuals belonged to.

On the issue of whether the last 16 years of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism (ignoring the semi-conventional Afghan campaign to overthrow the Taliban and the very conventional campaign to destroy the Saddam regime) harms innovation for future conventional warfare, I have to ask how?

The implication seems to be that without the COIN and CT campaigns we'd have conventional wars to test weapons, systems, and doctrine.

But isn't the more likely alternative to preparing for conventional war while fighting COIN and CT preparing for conventional war while at peace? Without a way to test weapons, systems, and doctrine in the real world?

Mind you, it is very true that we have a generation of troops with little experience in conventional warfare. But we are working to fix that, and when we do we will have a military with combat experience and appropriate training.

The question of whether we are innovating in a war or peacetime environment is interesting. Testing in a war environment is much more rapid.

Basically, we really aren't in a war environment for the purpose of developing weapons, systems, and doctrines. Surely you've heard the expression that "the military is at war, the nation is at the mall."

I'm not sure we will ever see anything different absent a lengthy war against a major regional or global power that requires national mobilization on the scale of the Civil War or World War II.

And then there is the problem of banking on predicting the enemy and type of war a couple decades out. I'd rather not put all my money on that kind of bet.

I'd rather make sure we have high quality personnel (as I noted for the Army) and an officer corps that in training is faced with unexpected situations rather than scripted scenarios (not that there isn't value in scripted scenarios to practice the logistics and command and control systems).

I think we really need to make sure our opposition force training formations for the Army and Air Force are fully exploited; and make sure the Marines and Navy have similar options for testing weapons, systems, and doctrines.

The Army troops who went through both the National Training Center and the Persian Gulf War noted that the American OpFor was far tougher to fight than the Iraqi army.

Anyway, it is an interesting article.

Here is a related article. The officer was a great combat soldier and he has made good points in the past. And in the article. But too often he just seems to needlessly turn his outrage dial to 11.

The reason is that Russia is close to--and America and the majority of European powers are far from--the potential theater of war in Poland and the Baltic states.

And an exercise can shift into an actual invasion of NATO in the blink of an eye.

That's it.

Russia is weaker overall than NATO, but Russia can send in overwhelming force to grab territory in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania before NATO can react.

Part of this problem is that if Russia uses the large-scale military exercise to move significant numbers of troops into Belarus and just leaves them there in new permanent bases, the threats to Lithuania and Ukraine are expanded and a new threat to Poland is created.

Imagine if, in 2003, the United States had invaded Iraq without a realistic, implementable plan for governance after the fall of Baghdad and Saddam Hussein. ... In fact, no imagination at all is required for the cases of Iraq and Libya. Both operations were undertaken with no serious regard to what would follow. Both produced disaster.

President Bush's national security team is assembling final plans for administering and democratizing Iraq after the expected ouster of Saddam Hussein. Those plans call for a heavy American military presence in the country for at least 18 months, military trials of only the most senior Iraqi leaders and quick takeover of the country's oil fields to pay for reconstruction.

The proposals, according to administration officials who have been developing them for several months, have been discussed informally with Mr. Bush in considerable detail. They would amount to the most ambitious American effort to administer a country since the occupations of Japan and Germany at the end of World War II. With Mr. Bush's return here this afternoon, his principal foreign policy advisers are expected to shape the final details in White House meetings and then formally present them to the president.

But as I noted:

Boy were there problems. Chiefly Syria, Iran, and al Qaeda, who made sure that there would be people shooting at us and our Iraqi allies after Saddam was defeated.

The main problem is that Syria and Iran essentially invaded Iraq and we let them get away with it without punishing them directly for waging war on Iraq and our forces. Yet still we won in 5 years. Which is actually pretty amazing.

As for disaster? The Obama administration boasted of the Iraq success as it pulled out, and Vice President Biden boasted that Iraq would be one of their great successes.

And the fact that Obama initiated Iraq War 2.0 to save what we had achieved puts his stamp of approval on what we achieved.

So I didn't bother to read the rest of the article. If the author has to genuflect to stupid conventional wisdom, I can't bother with him.

But by all means, let's remain in Iraq this time after the jihadis are beaten down and scattered.

And work to expel Iranian influence, too, of course. They are the biggest external threat, denying Iraq full access to the Arab world for support because Arab states fear Iraq will be an Iranian puppet.

Sadly that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if Iraqis turn to Iran in desperation because fellow Arab (but largely Sunni) states freeze Iraq out. Our State Department can help there, I hope.

Explain to me again why we aren't doing everything we can to help Ukraine and Syrian rebels send Russian body bags back to Russia?

The Taliban have received improved weaponry in Afghanistan that appears to have been supplied by the Russian government, according to exclusive videos obtained by CNN, adding weight to accusations by Afghan and American officials that Moscow is arming their one-time foe in the war-torn country.

America may supply weapons to Ukraine. I've long said that Ukraine can handle the big stuff (with help updating them from our new NATO allies who have experience with this) but that Ukraine could use help filling the gaps. Ukraine would like Javelin anti-tank missiles for their infantry. Ukraine should get them.

Don't make it easy for Russia to commit aggression in Europe and prop up a bloody dictator.

With a large portion of the first ABCT positioned in the middle of Romania, the U.S. Army has been able to show “that we can have a heavy brigade presence here,” Walters said. “This is the first time heavy brigades have been operating in Eastern Europe … on a continuous basis.”

And while amassing a large amount of firepower in a complex scenario will be the Super Bowl for the brigade, just getting to Romania and around Eastern Europe and Germany has been an invaluable experience for units within the brigade, soldiers in the field told Defense News on Thursday.

The U.S. Army faced one of its biggest challenges in January as it relearned to rapidly deploy large units and all of its resident equipment back to Europe through seaports and by road and rail.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

On a crisp January day in 1949, President Harry Truman stood before an inauguration crowd still recovering from want and war and envisioned a “world fabric of international security and growing prosperity.”

That idea, that America has an economic interest in promoting a stable and secure world order, has helped guide nearly seven decades of U.S. foreign policy. But a growing debate over America's role in the world has called into question that basic assumption. Are America's international security commitments really worth the cost?

Researchers at RAND used decades of economic data and new numbers on U.S. troops and treaties to test that question. They found strong evidence that the economic value of those overseas commitments likely exceeds their costs by billions of dollars every year.

“We wanted to know, Is this a good investment for the United States?” said Daniel Egel, an economist at RAND and lead author of the study. “Are these overseas commitments really benefiting the U.S. economy?”

This doesn't even consider the losses we'd experience if America retrenched and a major war was the result of the security vacuums that would be created in a number of dangerous places.

If the methodology is appropriate, of course. But it seems self evident that the prosperity and great powers truce we have experienced since 1945 is reliant on the system we established after World War II and which we have defended ever since.

The problem is that people have grown so used to the system we built that they think its rules are intrinsic to the global system and so our prosperity doesn't rely on our defense of the system.

I've been willing to give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt on whether it can enforce the Iran nuclear deal so strictly that the Iranians howl. So far I see no indication that we can do that.

And given that the up-front benefits to Iran have been squandered by Iran and their economy is still in rough shape even as Iran continues their reign of terror in the Middle East, I'd count those pallets of cash as an expensive lesson to America and start squeezing Iran again.

I'd rather junk the bad deal and start over working the problem without the delusion that we have s solution already.

Of all the reasons to keep the deal (from the American perspective), this is 100% non-persuasive:

Within the Trump administration, JCPOA supporters contend that rejecting the deal would harm the United States by calling into question our commitment to international agreements generally. There is ominous talk of America “not living up to its word.”

Iran launched a rocket carrying a satellite on Thursday, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News -- but it's unclear if the Islamic Republic achieved its ultimate objective of putting the satellite into orbit.

If this didn't work, perhaps the next one will work.

A rocket that can put a satellite into orbit could be used for long-range ballistic missiles. I'm sure Iran would never dream of putting nukes on it.

Both the US and Australia have confirmed that they recently completed a series of mysterious hypersonic missile tests. ...

A hypersonic missile would fulfill the US military's goal of building a conventional weapon that can strike anywhere within an hour, and it would be virtually impossible to stop using existing missile defenses.

Is it still cool if our enemies get these missiles that can't be stopped? Is it cool that we have the biggest targets to shoot at?

Mass effects, not platforms, I say. The big carrier is the queen of platform-centric warfare that is rapidly fading.

North Korea's army is in no condition to invade South Korea. Even if it managed to push into South Korea in the initial shock of invasion, the advance would probably fall apart at the first shopping mall the spearheads encountered, as the troops looted Heaven on Earth.

South Korea should probably subsidize massive numbers of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in the Uijongbu Corridor.

A half-hour's drive north of Seoul, along a highway lined with barbed wire, lie two shopping malls the size of several football stadiums, a stone's throw from the world's most militarised border.

The malls are in the city of Paju, gateway to the U.N. truce village of Panmunjom, where military officers from the combatants of the 1950-53 Korean war discuss armistice matters - when the two sides are on speaking terms, which they aren't these days.

"Fairy tales come true in Paju", is the advertising lure from the Korean Tourism Board.

If the South Korean army completely collapses in the face of a North Korean ground invasion, the North Korean advance will grind to a halt as 13th-century poverty-stricken peasant soldiers of the North Korean army stumble into the ruins of a 21st century fairy tale stocked with consumer goods and Choco-pies that will still be more appealing than a new gray apartment building back home.

"Shaking a mountain is easy but shaking the People's Liberation Army is hard," ministry spokesman Wu Qian told a briefing, adding that its ability to defend China's territory and sovereignty had "constantly strengthened".

Early in June, according to the Chinese interpretation of events, Indian guards crossed into China's Donglang region and obstructed work on a road on the plateau.

--And that after China lost an international court ruling on a dispute with Manila in the South China Sea.

--Japan is rearming to defend its islands (that China claims) in the East China Sea.

--South Korea put in place THAAD missile defenses.

--North Korea has thumbed its nose at China, showing China to be powerless to influence Kim Jong-Un.

And now India is giving China grief neat Tibet?

India may find that China giving in to India over this border issue is one setback too many for China's leaders to bear right now. Bad luck, that.

I don't expect full-scale war. But I would not be surprised if China gives Indian forces a bloody nose in the area and then pulls into a defensive posture in full control of the disputed border area and road.

Does India then attempt to escalate with more ground troops when I bet China has superior ability to reinforce the region and supply the forces?

Or does India attempt to strike back elsewhere on the border to get a bargaining chip?

Does India block Chinese ships traveling the Indian Ocean?

Does India focus on the Doka La area but attempt to use air power to hurt China's logistics capacity in the region?

What does China do if there is that kind of escalation? Try out their ship-killing ballistic missiles on Indian navy vessels in the Bay of Bengal?

China and India had signed an agreement in 2012 to respect the existing Bhutan border. But like most Chinese territorial claims revived recently incidents like this serve to make the Chinese government look like it is “serving the people” and are carried out at little cost in lives or money. So thousands of Chinese and Indian troops have been moved to this inhospitable part of the world because the Chinese government wants some good publicity inside China.

That's a dangerous way to get good publicity.

UPDATE: More here and here. You wouldn't think it is worth it to fight over that small piece of land. But it may happen yet because each side considers a Chinese advance the first small step to gain much more, and it could escalate.

India doesn't want to retreat and encourage the Chinese to take far more by setting this precedent.

China may want a victory somewhere. And even if they aren't that ambitious, at this point they may not want another setback. Which gets to the same point.

We may be at the point of "if you want war, let it start here and now."

President Donald Trump's persistent overtures toward Russia are placing him increasingly at odds with his national security and foreign policy advisers, who have long urged a more cautious approach to dealing with the foreign adversary.

Two, our actions don't match the soft words. We are continuing to build up forces in eastern NATO; Trump continues to push NATO--whose basic purpose is to contain Russia--to spend more on defense; we have sold advanced air defense missiles to Poland and Romania; Trump, in Poland, explicitly endorsed NATO's common defense provision; and America is back on track to halt and reverse our military decline.

Do you really think the Russians are comforted by the Tweets when the actions are concrete?

I'm hoping it might push Russia to some sense. They are relatively weak overall and strong only when confronting the vacuum of NATO power in the east. And the Russians are no doubt cheering Democrats here:

The Russians are delighted that they have convinced some that they control Donald Trump. Not only does this breed instability in the United States, but it gives a sense of overwhelming, if covert, Russian power.

I don't always agree with Stratfor (I think Syria serves to extend Russia's buffer zone to the eastern Mediterranean Sea; and I don't see why the West has to go along with Russia's perceived need for buffers to the west), but they are a valuable source of analysis.

Perhaps when we help fill that void, Russia will stop threatening NATO because there might be consequences.

And then the soft words might have an effect on getting America and Russia to cooperate in ways that benefit America.

Remember, I've long been in favor of resisting Russian aggression. But let's not forget--the way Russia is forgetting--that the major growing threat is China in Asia. We should not overreact to Russia's threats at the expense of Asian defenses.

And there is the American role in the Islamic Civil War to minimize the collateral damage until the jihadis can be defeated, suppressed, and discredited.

As things now stand, the Liaoning and the new carrier can launch strikes with their J-15s operating at less than maximum range and with less than maximum payloads. They can accommodate antisubmarine helicopters. Their defensive capacity is limited by the lack of fixed-wing early warning aircraft, though in time they presumably will operate Ka-31s or their equivalents. They certainly will impress the smaller countries around the South China Sea. In a game of appearances, the presence of two or three impressive-looking Chinese carriers ought to carry considerable weight. It remains to be seen whether China’s neighbors (especially Vietnam) consider their submarine forces and land-based aircraft adequate counters.

Probably the most important role of the Liaoning and her new sister is that they will provide the Chinese Navy with experience operating carriers and air wings. A lesson of previous carrier navies is that without experience aircraft carriers can impress unsophisticated neighbors but will not provide combat power. With experience, the Chinese Navy can make good on its claim that its role is to protect Chinese vital interests abroad, beyond the first island chain to the east and to the Middle East.

They are clearly outclassed by America's carriers and their well-trained crews. They seem unlikely to be the decisive factor in defeating the United States Navy to control the seas. They seem unlikely to be decisive for defeating the Japanese navy, for that matter.

And these carriers face their own anti-access/aerial denial threat approaching the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea that our carriers face approaching China--missiles and planes from land bases.

In theory the carriers could provide fleet air defense. But again, they are inferior for that purpose and Chinese ships would be better served relying on land-based combat air patrol.

Then there is power projection. The small carriers could play a decisive role in taking small islands in the South China Sea from smaller neighbors with competing claims. As long as America doesn't intervene.

And in general, they would be useful in show-the-flag missions up and down the west side of the Indian Ocean from South Africa to the Arabian peninsula. They would be powerful in any dispute with an African coastal state.

The carrier and its task force could also sail up the Red Sea and beyond into the Mediterranean Sea to show Chinese power at the end of their New Silk Road.

And a carrier would be useful in all of these areas to help evacuate Chinese citizens in case of a local crisis. China would probably be happy to have more options than they had in Libya in 2011 when their citizens had to get out of Dodge in a hurry.

So the new limited capacity Chinese carriers have little role in sea control, a minor but real role in power projection, and a major role in diplomacy and crisis management.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Iran at least hasn't been able to really exploit the Iran deal to fix their economy yet.

Rebuilding the Persian empire isn't a high priority for most Iranians.

Despite Iran's hatred of Israel, all Iran is doing is pushing Israel and Arab states closer to resist Iran.

Hezbollah, which has 8,000 fighters in Syria, has suffered 2,000 KIA and 6,000 WIA as the spearhead of Assad's offensives. Iran continues to fight "Israel" to the last Arab.

Assad has turned over an air base in central Syria to Iran, which wants 5,000 Shia mercenaries to staff and protect it as a new Hezbollah in Syria.

Including Hezbollah, Iran has 24,000 mercenaries fighting in Syria, mostly from Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Assad has 200,000 troops, mostly suitable only for garrison duty. I assume this includes Syrian militias.

Iran is abiding by the nuclear deal to end their nuclear programs, they say. I don't think the narrow issue of abiding by the nuclear agreement is true. And the deal is so bad that even rigorous and successful enforcement of the deal terms won't stop Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons in facilities off limits to the provisions of the deal.

Saudi Arabia has lost their dispute with Qatar. (I still think Qatar will be moved somewhat off the fence toward the Gulf Arabs and America).

One of Iran's S-300 batteries is missing. So where is it?

Many Iraqis--even in the militias--are wary of Iran.

Iranian Kurds seem to be back in the armed resistance stage.

When Iran fired 6 ballistic missiles at ISIL in Syria in retaliation for terror attacks inside Iran, 4 of the missiles missed Syria and struck Iraqi territory according to the Israelis who pay close attention to these things.

There is more. That stuck out.

Basically, Iran under the mullahs is no friend and I don't think they can be.

Oh please. I see Australian academics can live in fantasy world as easily as American academics.

The idea that Europe is stepping into a void left by Trump is ludicrous. And basing it on the then-failure of Trump to explicitly endorse NATO's common defense position is just dumb. As I've said, America is in NATO--not Trump. The Article V provision is binding on America which ratified the treaty under our Constitution. It does not depend on the whim of one man. I guess some got used to pen-and-phone rules under Obama.

Also, Article V isn't as iron-clad as this criticism would lead you to believe. It just requires a formal response and not full mobilization and sending in every swinging dick (or flapping ...) you have in uniform to the front. After Europe's World War I experience, no European state was going to commit to automatic responses to a threat.

More basically, Europe doesn't have the military capability to take its fate into their own hands. Their spending on defense is low--although rising in response to Russia. And they get little for what they do spend because most of their militaries are composed of civil servants in uniforms. Pockets of excellence demonstrate they have the potential. But the siren song of the welfare state will keep Europe from having a serious military required to back a serious independent policy.

And that assumes that "Europe" can act with one voice as a political Europe under to proto-imperial order of the European Union.

It also assumes that Europe would collectively decide to act more decisively than the America of their imaginary fears of America's retreat. Are we going to pretend that Europe has been uniformly solid in resisting Russian aggression against Ukraine and Putin's general aggressiveness? Seriously?

And Merkel (who I don't dismiss given the alternatives to her imperfect governance) is simply bashing Trump for domestic political purposes.Who seriously expects militarily weak Germany to provide leadership? Merkel is leading her reelection campaign.

Europe can't take their fate into its own hands. Won't spend what it needs to do that. Hopefully won't be politically unified to try to do that. And will need America to avoid being a victim of foreign powers.

And for the nervous types who think American treaty obligations are only good if it gets repeated endorsement by every president, President Trump actually did that since the article was written.

So never mind, I guess.

America still leads the West. In Asia and Europe. For those this year who fret America won't lead, put your defense money where your complaining mouths are and follow, eh?

“We, the representatives of the former regions of Ukraine, with the exception of Crimea, declare the establishment of the new state, which is the successor of Ukraine,” [the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Alexander Zakharchenko] said in a statement on the rebel-aligned Donetsk News Agency. “Ukraine has proved to be a failed state and demonstrated a failure to provide its citizens a peaceful and prosperous present and future.”

Russia has been slowly taking land from neighboring Georgia for years, and Moscow appears to have done it again in early July, moving its borders about 2,300 feet into the former satellite state, according to Yahoo News UK.

On July 3, Russia troops simply picked up a border sign and moved it farther into Georgian territory, Yahoo reported.

Georgia's security agency said the land grab was "illegal," according to The Independent.

I've noted this Russian aggression before.

Perhaps the West can belatedly use the continued land grabs to sanction Russia further and make up for looking the other way in 2008.

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Ukraine's trade deal with the European Union begins in September. I think little of the EU, especially its likely evolution into an imperial state if left unchecked. But right now it is part of the West and is far superior to Russia. So this is progress in making Ukraine a Western state. And the EU is right: corruption holds back Ukraine. Both economically and militarily. Which should make rule of law a higher priority given that Russia occupies Ukrainian territory and continues to wage war on Ukraine.

Law enforcement is a core function of government. And government is screwing up forensic science that is the basis of convictions. Maybe if government didn't expand into so many areas to show how much it "cares," it wouldn't screw up basic functions. Also. The government said it was science. But it wasn't. And guilty people went free while innocent people went to jail. Heck of a job!

At a time when many conservatives continue to turn against the Iraq War, I shall restate that America was right to fight and win the war. Victory was an opportunity we squandered. President Obama validated the war by initiating Iraq War 2.0 to defend what Bush achieved. May Trump stay to defend what Bush--and ultimately though belatedly Obama--achieved. We still have a great interest in a prosperous democratic Iraq that provides an alternative to autocracy or Islamism for governance in the Moslem Arab world.Haiti's government wants an army. Haiti does not need an army. Anyone dumb enough to want to invade is too dumb to succeed in holding Haiti. Seriously, add to the national police if Haiti authorities want to patrol the border and help with natural disasters. Heck, most armies are nothing more than police capable only of defeating poorly armed civilians anyway. Why pretend?

I am sick of the media's jihad on President Trump based on standards they never enforced on Democrats via their newfound hatred of Russia. Or did I miss the collusionpalooza about Obama's "flexibiliy" in exchange for Russian "space" offer conveyed to Putin through Medvedev? I am also sick of Trump feeding them ammunition. Not that feeding my preexisting disdain for Trump personally will get me to switch support to the Democrats who are the only alternative and who have zero credibility to govern given their decent into left-wing insanity and street violence. I'm not sure what this situation pushes me to, but supporting Democrats isn't going to be it. Perhaps there is hope if the media gets tired of their personal struggle for self improvement. Actually, I might be pushed to just not watching television news. I'm tired of the attacks with little substance and I'm tired of the exasperated defenses. It's exhausting. My life isn't following this circus orchestrated by the media. Although it might not officially be coordinated as it was in the past as much as it is just the herd instinctively running the same way--off a cliff if my exhaustion is not unique. LATER: Since I wrote this, I've cut the cord. I turn on the news in the morning for any overnight breaking news and then news at 6:00. Other than that, silence or music. Rot in ratings Hell for all I care.

If the ability to see problems in anythingisn't a super power, I don't know what is. Woke-Man? Wonder Woken? To Hell with those people. Why does anybody pay any attention at all to them? Tip to Instapundit.

This is what it is like to live under a 1984 regime that seeks out and punishes thought crime and bad thoughts. And these idiots voluntarily live in this environment! Worse, they want all of us to live under an actual government (that they run) with those powers. To Hell with them.

Democrats who hate Trump are looking forward to the 2018 and 2020 elections. Why? They loudly and constantly shriek that Trump is a fascist who is imposing a dictatorship on America. Under the circumstances, why do Democrats believe there will be honest elections? Or any elections at all? And I'm the one lacking nuance?

Yes, China's new base in Djibouti changes things, symbolizing a China that wants to extend its influence beyond the range of shore-based aircraft. But you have to be able to hold the base. America had bases in the Philippines and Britain had bases in Hong Kong and Singapore. But neither country could hold them in the face of Japanese power in war time. Don't panic. Work the problem.

I still don't see any issue with all the Russia stuff. But with so many Republican punditssaying there could be something, I remain unsure despite not seeing what the problem is with listening to someone as any campaign would do when given an opportunity for dirt on their opponent. That's a sad but real fact of life in politics. Funny enough, the Republican pundits in their new angle haven't persuaded Republican voters that there might be something to the Russia stuff. Which is kind of funny when you remember that Democrats claim that Russian "fake news" persuaded enough Democrats to vote for Trump in 2016 to swing the election to him.

Iran is not following the Iran nuclear deal--and this is just what we can see. Why pretend they are following it by certifying them as compliant? Doesn't that just set the standard that sort of following the agreement is fine? Doesn't certifying Iran as compliant when they are not just encourage them to see what other line they can cross? Of course, if we just plan to hit Iran hard then the look of surprise on the mullahs' faces will be all the more special.

I think I'd pay good money if navies would establish a surface ship classification largely based on displacement (carriers and amphibs are different, of course) rather than seemingly randomly defining ships. Frigate, indeed.

So Democrats are getting the vapors over the thought of Senator Kid Rock? I have sympathy, of course. But the Democrats have former SNL star Senator Al Franken, so they're up by one with clowns in the Senate, you must admit.

The Russia connection hysteria wouldn't even be possible if Hillary Clinton hadn't had a private server outside of government control while Secretary of State and then deleted 30,000 emails she claimed were personal in nature rather than let the State Department make the decision of what was an official document and what was a yoga scheduling email. Who wouldn't have wanted that information if they thought it was out there, "unbleached?" And remember, President Obama knew that Hillary was using an unofficial email server that bypassed government security systems and procedures but did nothing. So President Obama did nothing to stop Russian cyber interference and did nothing to stop our secretary of state from being vulnerable to Russian hacking. That's not collusion, but it is a whole lot of incompetence that is good enough for Russian government work.

It annoys and offends me when people say the Republican Congress must prove it can "govern." No! Legislative bodies legislate. They write the legislation that becomes statutes which guides the executive branch in executing the laws as written, or governing--like governors at the state level, for example. Legislative bodies do not govern. We don't want executive branches legislating, after all. Why talk of legislators as the executive branch?

I still don't understand why it was collusion for Trump's people to listen to the Russians who might have evidence of Clinton crimes or collusion. Which actually existed, you must admit, even if we don't have those 30,000 Hillary emails from her time as secretary of state scrubbed from her personal server rather than turned over to the State Department for review.

A nice overview of Russia's enemy-producing foreign policy. Short version: Russia is corrupt and broke, too weak to compel Ukraine to submit, scaring even Finland and Sweden to work with a strengthening NATO to resist Russia, losing ground to China in former Central Asian Soviet republics, and too weak to stand up to China short of nuking them. Oh, and their sub-based nuclear arsenal is having problems, too. If the Russians keep up their brilliant diplomacy, Belarus will petition for NATO membership within a decade.

After a relentless media frontal assault on Trump 24/7, Trump is stillmore popular than Hillary Clinton. Is there nothing America can do to compel that awful politician to just go away? Tip to Instapundit.

Oh, this isn't "useless." How do you put a value on demonstrating your moral superiority over the rest of us? Tip to Instapundit.

Huzzah! The end of the (relevant) world predicted at the latest for 2018 has been cancelled! Reset your doomsday plans for 2168. Which is smart because by then the scientist making the prediction will be long dead unlike today when he has to face the error of his earlier prediction.

Senator Schumer calls on Republicans to work with Democrats to pass a health fill that "lowers premiums, provides long-term stability to the markets and improves our health care system." Wait. What? Obamacare didn't do that already? And here I thought they cared. Failure to repeal Obamacare doesn't mean Obamacare continues. It just means it collapses without a replacement.

I'd like to think that draconian executions for minor offenses is a sign that North Korea is unstable enough to implode. Do strong rulers really execute people for watching the wrong TV shows? If the reports are reliable, of course. Are we lucky enough to escape the choice of attacking North Korea or accepting them as a nuclear state (with Iran a customer)?

The Left is nuts and intrinsically pushed to even more nuttery. I will always cherish a CNN report about an anti-meat protest some years ago. You could see the young woman who claimed "meat is murder" to the camera subsequently struggling to control her inner nut yet finally blurted out "milk is murder!" CNN subsequently edited that out for future airings.

American, NATO, and other European forces are exercising in eastern Europe. Putin will soon have "3,000 Russian troops and 800 tank" in Belarus for Zapad 17 exercises. The figures are confusing. Just crews for 800 Russian tanks would be 2,400 men; and consider that 800 tanks is darned close to our entire inventory of tanks in all of our active Army brigades. If Russia is putting 800 tanks into Belarus, a whole lot more troops than 3,000 will be involved and it is disturbing that Russia is claiming such a small troop number. Something on the order of 70,000 is more likely. It isn't the exercise that is the problem. The problem is that invasion preparations could be made under the cover of exercises done on a large scale. Let me just note that the CBS article goes out of the way to highlight Trump's campaign questioning of NATO without also noting that Trump sold advanced Patriot missiles to Poland while in that country to give a speech in defense of the West. Why imply American commitment is less than solid?

History is hard: Leftists oddly think slavery was uniquely American (and neglect how many Union soldiers died to end it) rather than a widespread crime.

I hope the movie Dunkirk prompts the British to relearn the lesson of getting off the continent to save themselves as Brexit talks bog down.

"Americans are feeling better about their own lives than they have in over a decade." So not since the Bush administration, they're saying? Huh. I'm not sure why this is shocking. Since Trump was elected, half the population is happy to have a government more willing to leave them the eff alone; and the other half can safely pretend they are resisting a dictatorship (safe because the government aims to leave them alone), thus fluffing their egos.

The Charge of the Fright Brigade. Why have Filipino jihadis decided to fight to the death in Marawi? Have the jihadis experienced Mosul Envy and decided to get the glory of dying for the caliphate?

Senator John McCain has brain cancer. He says he will be back soon. I hope so and wish him well. But this situation highlights my refrain that the Republicans need a sense of urgency about passing legislation given their narrow edge in the Senate that could evaporate at any moment. Does anybody remember the Scott Brown special election that threw Democratic plans into chaos?

Here's the Mad Scientist tag at Small Wars Journal, which includes the top 8 entries in the science fiction contest. My entry didn't make the cut. I think it might still be published online but I'm not sure if that will happen, or when it will happen if it does happen.

While I remain ecstatic that Trump continues not to be Hillary Clinton, and though good things continue to be done that wouldn't have been done under Clinton, Trump has yet to make me like or respect him. Extremist attackers and defenders of Trump are really just off-putting. So cutting the cord of the media continues to be refreshing. I don't rule out that Trump could be more than just non-Hillary by the end of this term. I worry the unhinged resistance could be more than slightly violent.

StatCounter

Search This Blog

Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.